Production Concept for The Crucible
Nicholas Barnard
TH361: Theatre History II
Matthew Benjamin
Director's Vision
Arthur Miller's Crucible is often thought as a play integrally tied to the Cold War era, and it is a loose allegorical attack on McCarthyism of the 1950's. As such many people consider this play as a dual historical piece, both of the late 1600's and the 1950's.
It speaks toward larger issues of the dangers of groupthink, theocracies, propaganda systems, unchecked leaders, and intolerance of diversity. In a more general sense these are wartime attitudes. The western nations of the world, and The United States in particular, have engaged in a mostly unchecked ideological war on terrorism.
The ultimate vision in presenting The Crucible is to transpose its commentary on 1950's McCarthyism and 1600's Witch Hunts, to comment on the current reformation of the American landscape, and the beginning of a possible long term ideological war, rivaling to the Cold War.
Design Elements
Projection Screen Layout
The visual plateau should be divided up into several different areas, as detailed in diagram 1.
These areas should not be contained with in the proscenium arch of the theatre, but instead should over lap the whole area in front of the audience. These projection screens should be set up with their respective projectors, so that the images are crisp and vivid. Also the playing area should be designed in such a way so that it too will be able to be filled with a projection screen. When the playing area is filled with a projection screen all of the projection screens must be able to be synchronized to create one single large projection screen.
This layout of screens, without the playing area fill in screen, will create a natural proscenium arch, but the division line between the arch and the playing area should not be embellished in anyway. This is to limit the audience's ability to see the play as something that is disconnected from them, in other words the audience play division must be minimized as much as possible.
Ideally screens would also be placed through the house and in the lobby mirroring what is being displayed on each of the screens through the front of the playing area. The space in between the screens in the house should be accented by chain link fence, and crude unfinished wood pieces supporting them. The audience should feel enveloped and trapped by the media and fence that is being played around them.
The sound to the media on the screens should be played at a background level, so audience members can choose to pay attention to a specific media. The audible element will need to be properly balanced as not to be a total distraction, but still be audible.
Projection Screen Utilization
The projection screens will serve as the primary method of linking the witch craft trials displayed in the playing area, to the events occurring in the “war” on terrorism.
The complete screen including the playing area should be utilized in lieu of a pre-show curtain warmer. The curtain warmer should be a PhotoMosaic from the process developed by Jeremy S. De Bonet and Michael J Hawley of MIT. It is a system of creating images, that themselves are made of smaller images. The smaller images in this case should be photos of people from all over the world. The originating master image should be a Mercator projection of the earth, with the billowing smoke from the location of New York City. This smoke should rise toward the top of the map, and cover the whole top of the image.
If possible, several images should be prepared; each dated, and displayed one at a time, one per minute starting at the opening of the house thirty minutes before the published start time. The image set should start at September 4th, 2001 and continue through March 11th, 2002, and should increment on seven day intervals. On September 11th, the smoke should start rising from the New York City Area. The smoke should slowly migrate toward enveloping the area around Afghanistan staring at the first slide in October, and fully engulf the area by the end of the month; the smoke should remain in this area of the map. The final mosaic should fade out after the house speech is made, and the playing area should be revealed in the blackout.
Before the lights come up on the main playing area the individual projection screen areas should flicker to life, like a television being turned on after being off for several hours. Face Box 1 should contain a picture of George Bush Jr.; Face Box 2 should contain a picture of Osama Bin Laden. The other screens should contain images from news reports on the Gary Condit affair, and the ticker box should reflect news related to the Condit affair. This set of images should last for around thirty seconds, and should transition into slides described as follows
The ticker box should have headlines such as “Two planes crash into World Trade Center,” “Arabs believed responsible,” “Bush declares `War on Terrorism',” intermingled with these should be headlines relating to the action of the play, “Town Girls found practicing witchcraft in woods,” “Reverend John Hale summoned to investigate,” “Giles Cory, files 14th time lawsuit,” “Judge Hathorne and Danforth summoned to hold Witch Trials.” These headlines should be intermingled with the current day headlines. Attention should be paid to keeping the headlines both current day and 1600's displayed on ticker box synced with the action occurring in the playing area. Filler stories should be used from local and state issues, especially ones relating to first amendment issues, and discrimination.
The Face Boxes should have images of the actors dressed, as their characters should be displayed as they enter the action, with their character names captioned at the bottom in the style of a local newscast. The one Face Box should contain the character photo, while the other should contain a modern counterpart, for example, when Judge Hathorne enters, his picture should be displayed juxtaposed against US Attorney General John Ashcroft's picture.
Screens one through four should be used to display news stories, of both the action on the playing area, and 2001-2002 related events. As in the face boxes and the ticker box, these stories should be timed to the action on the stage, and should both link to the action on the stage. These should seem as if someone is flipping channels searching for something to watch. Real news footage as broadcasted should be used. Also at certain intervals, all the screens should display the same image, as sets of corporate siblings were broadcasting the same newscasts. As a possible interactive element of the show audience members could rent remote controls that would allow them to change the image on a specific screen. This would require much planning but would further remove the audience's level of removal from the action.
Set Design
The success of this production concept is dependent on the playing area becoming another “screen” in which history is presented for the audience. The visual experience within the playing area should be very much a period piece, oblivious to the technological extravaganza going on around it.
The set should be composed of a unit set of a single blank cabin room with windows. Furniture pieces should be made of simple unfinished split rail like wood, and should be fully set during the blackouts in between scenes. Furniture pieces should not be specific to any one character or scene. Generic furniture items should be supplied and used interchangeably.
Costume Design
The costume design should be guided by the same concepts as the set design. The goal of the costume design is to feed into the period piece presentation of the playing area. Despite this guidance, the costumes should be as colorful as possible to attempt to assist the actors in having attention drawn to them.
The one character that should not be costumed totally historically should be Betty Paris. Her costume should be very specific in eluding her character to The Statue of Liberty. She is the epitome of freedom utilized and consequences of those freedoms paid for. During much of the play while she is paralyzed, it is representative of freedom being paralyzed.
Lighting Design
The lighting design for this production should be reduced to its minimum elements. The lighting design should not be utilized to communicate emotional, visual focus, or any other theatrical element. The lighting should correctly light the whole playing area so that it is visible. Special care must be taken not to light any of the screens surrounding the playing area as this will wash out the images presented on them.
Given the amount of light that will be split over from the various screens placed throughout the house, the lighting designer should be placed in charge of working with a method to balance the light levels through the house, and achieve a warm, fireplace lit room feeling. It will most probably be necessary for the lighting designer to utilize both the installed house lighting, and other instruments to create this effect that should be maintained through the action and the pre-show/intermission/post-show elements of the production.
Sound Design
The sound design of this production should aim to let us fully hear the audio to everything that is visible, if the audience member selects to focus on it and not the action in the playing area. The goal is not to assault the ears of the audience with totally random noise, but instead they should feel as if they've just entered their local electronics store television section, and tuned every television to a different station, and turned the volume down on all of them, but the playing area.
The pre-show, intermission, and post-show music should be forgone in exchange for recorded real and period radio broadcasts, resembling National Public Radio's “All Things Considered”, or the BBC's Overnight Reports. These broadcasts should include the pre-show house speech as well, and then fade out. An interesting concept to play with would also be to incorporate announcements into the shows telling the audience how long it is until the show starts.
Given the visual busyness, it will be the sound designer's job to ensure that the actors are sufficiently reinforced to drive the audience's attention into the playing area. The source for the sounds for all the individual visual elements should be set up in such a manner, that source of the audio is at, or appears to be at the location of the image in which its related to.
If unlimited time and money were available, it would also be interesting to play with the concept of giving each audience member a headset that has the ability to determine where they are looking, and increase the volume of the sound of the imagery related to where they are looking. The concept should be further examined for feasibleness and audience acceptance, as it reforms several theatrical norms, and borders on pushing the production more toward a live video game, than a theatrical presentation.
Theatrical Styles
Acting Style
The acting style of this production should be clear and direct, the actors should allow the words to carry their performances through the production, and should make liberal use of dramatic pauses within their speech to emphasize the loud portions and allow the audience to catch up with the action.
The actors should be chided against over dramatization, the audience needs to believe that these are real people sharing these events within their life, the choice to be more realistic vs. being overly theatrical should always lean toward the side of realism.
Program Design
The program should not be overlooked as a means to draw the audience further into the action of the play. The program should be a half height newspaper. As in the screens printed news stories from both the on stage action, and the current day events. The cast and crew bios should be listed in a who's who, in which summaries of the characters and present day people should be listed.
Pictures of the play's action should be placed within the program as if they were actual news elements. Despite this the program should not be used to foreshadow the action, and only stories relating to the first or second act should be placed in the program.
Director's Notes
A Director Program notes function as “written preshow music,” as Tim Rowe, a Springfield, Ohio based director has stated. The following notes should be printed in the program, most preferably couched as an opinion piece on the opinion page of the newspaper program. Also note that the figures in these notes assume that The Crucible is being produced in Wright State University's Festival Playhouse, the numbers should be adjusted accordingly for the theatre in which the show is being produced.
Following September 11th, and the subsequent detention of more than one thousand, two hundred immigrants; more than three times the number of people who would be in the theatre your sitting in on a sold out evening. Imagine everyone in this theatre and two of their friends being detained for minor violations of the immigration code, or for going out to dance last evening. Now imagine because of something seemingly minor you are now facing the death penalty, or indefinite detention, in an outdoor chain link fence cage.
Doesn't happen in America? Or, it only happens in America when we're attacked? There are other manifestations of these same intolerances, for example: driving while black; women who are unable to become executives although they are more qualified than the last three men who were just promoted; being unable to enter the hospital room of your dying life partner, just because you both are the same gender; or even worse, being tied to a wooden fence, pistol whipped, and left to die by two good old American boys.
Not in America, these things don't happen, you say? Which America do you live in? The 1950s McCarthyism, where everyone is the same, and we will go to all lengths to ensure that that's true?
Enjoy this evening of theatre, and be glad it's not your life, because for many people, it is.
Director's Vision Revisited
The elements as laid out should provide an appropriate guide and expose the method in which this play will become relevant to current day audiences. The sincere hope of the director is that the audience is prodded and provoked enough to raise the audience to take action as their conscious dictates in the real world. This theatrical production's focus is to provoke, and it should be extensively work shopped to achieve that end.
Bibliography
Amnesty International. “USA: Amnesty International to tour jails housing post September 11 detainees,” Internet. Last accessed March 10, 2002.
<http://web.amnesty.org/web/news.nsf/WebAll/24A153D20EC9BCE480256B570046D25B?OpenDocument>
Johnson, Steven. Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software. New York: Scribner, 2001.
Miller, Arthur. “The Crucible”, The Portable Arthur Miller. New York. Penguin Books, 1995
Reid, Francis. Stages for Tomorrow: Boston: Focal Press, 1998.
Shaw Anup. “War, Propaganda and the Media,” Internet. Last accessed March 10, 2002 <http://www.globalissues.org/HumanRights/Media/Military.asp>
SparkNotes. The Crucible. New York. Spark Publishing, 2002.
Young, Kathryn Sue, et al. Group Discussion: A Practical Guide to Participation and Leadership. Prospect Heights: Waveland Press, 2001.
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